A recent
Business Week article about a new
software that can "write a story" from raw
data leads one to wonder if machines will eventually
take over journalism. In the example cited in the
article, sports media companies can take raw statistics
from a sporting event and translate it into a readable
story, saving the cost of hiring a beat reporter to
attend and report on a game.

The company, Narrative
Science, entered the sports industry first because it
was deemed to be low-hanging fruit. According to company
executives, only about one percent of sporting events in
the U.S. are covered by reporters. Scorekeepers simply
e-mail the game data to the company and it is fed into a
computer. The software renders the data into a narrative
that can then be online in only a few minutes.

As the
technology evolves, the writing standards expect to be
elevated. In the article, a series of reports on a game
are presented to the reader, and it is virtually
impossible to tell which one was written by a human and
which was from the computer.

The founders expect to move
from sports into other areas that use vast amounts of
data, such as the medical field, financial services and
surveys. Now the question: how do you pitch a robot?